Mommy, What's the Playboy Mansion?

So I’m in the minivan driving my three kiddos home from NFL Flag Football practice. There I am in 5 o’ clock traffic, impatiently crisscrossing through a sea of angry red brake lights while trying to hear the latest NPR news on who North Korea will blow up first -- itself or us -- when my 5-year-old son drops his own atomic bomb in my lap without really knowing it:

“Mom, what’s the Playboy Mansion?”

Insert screech of minivan tires jerking to a halt. ‘Good thing we were merely inching along in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

What the hell? No he didn’t. There’s no way! Maybe he said haunted mansion. Yeah, haunted. Halloween’s coming up, right? He definitely said haunted. Wait a minute, he did!

“Can you say that I again, honey? I don’t think I heard you right.”

“Yeah. Um, mom, what’s the Playboy Mansion and, like, who lives there? And where is this mansion place anyway?”

“Wait, wait, WAIT! Hold your horses a minute, all right? Where’d you hear about the dang Playboy Mansion in the first place?”

“I asked you a question first, mom. Where’s the Playboy Mansion? Have you been there? Can I go? When can you take me to the Playboy Mansion?”

“J-j-just stop asking so many questions and answer mine first! I’m the mom. Answer me then I’ll answer you. Now, mommy asked you how you know about the Playboy Mansion. Go on and tell me, honey. I promise I won’t get mad. Scouts honor. I swear.” (Oh, how we moms lie through our Crest Whitening Stripped teeth. We’re not nearly the sanitized saints society says we are on Mother’s Day.)

“Well, this morning, in daddy’s mishu-beeshi (Mitsubishi for those of you who don't speak kid) … on the way to school … um … You sure you won’t get mad?” (Way to go, daddy. Training ‘em young to cover your ass.)

No he did NOT just say DAD’s car! I thought our little adults-only radio problem had already poof gone away.

“I already promised I won’t get mad. C’mon, babe. Just finish what you were saying about dad's car.”

“No. Not mad at me. I mean dad. Will you get mad at dad if I tell you?”

“You betcha’ I’m gonna’ be mad at dad if you heard about the Playboy Mansion in his car. Are you guys still listening to Adam Corolla on the way to school?”

“Mom, don’t worry 'bout it. Adam Corolla’s a funny guy. I like him. But Mommmm … You’re still not telling me what the Playboy Mansion is!”


“Okay … your dad’s in deep on this one but I’ll worry about that later. I’ve already asked him four times to quit letting you listen to Adam Corolla in the morning. It’s sooooo not age appropriate for you.”

“Mom, mom. Pa-lease! I’m soooo old enough for that stuff. I understand everything that funny guy’s saying. We’re so still going to listen to him even if you don’t like it. It’s our guy time. Me and dad bein’ guys.”

I’ll deal with mister guy-dad later. He’s sooooo DEAD. Just wait until I see him! I can’t believe he’s allowing, even encouraging, our impressionable 5-year-old son to listen to that nasal, annoying, buck-toothed comic piggie from The Man Show, the former Loveline sidekick of Dr. Drew Pinsky (who I briefly wrote for way back in my short pre-baby factory journalism life).

*By the way, if it’s not in quotes here, trust me, I didn’t say it to my son in the minivan today. I’m way too sensitive to let anything like “Dad is sooo dead” slip in front of the kids. I wouldn't want to scare them into thinking I'm the horrible nag that I am, now would I? Again, it’s the perfection complex. They just can’t know that I’m going to rip dad a new one and possibly put him on you-know-what-probation to boot.*

OH ... MY ... GOD! Did my innocent little mister perfect feminist-raised 5-year-old boy just equate listening to sleezy botox’d skanks jacked up on silicone double-d’s throwing themselves at a greasy male chauvinist shock jock jerk with precious daddy bonding time? Well, shit. I used to watch ho-slappin’ Brit-perv Benny Hill with my family when I was only five and I’m not at all perverted. Not even close. Clearly, another shameless lie.

“Mom, mom … mom … You STILL haven’t told me what the Playboy Mansion is!!!”

Okay, mama on the spot. ‘Better make up something good but not too much of a fib because you’re supposed to be fundamentally opposed to lying in the first place but more importantly lying to your kids. Just a teeny white lie. C’mon girl. Whaddya’ got?

“Well, um … The Playboy Mansion, now that you bring it up, is … um … a place where a lot of bunnies live.”

“Cool. Bunnies. Yes! That’s just what I was thinking. I didn’t really know because dad switched the station right after the guy said I could win, like, a whole 10 bucks if I answered a question about this strange place, the Playboy Mansion. Know what’s even cooler than all that wicked good prize money, mom?”

“No. You’re killing me, kid! What? What’s cooler than 10 whole bucks?”

“If I win the contest Adam Corrolla will take me to the Playboy Mansion! I’ll get to see all the animals!”


“So you’re asking me about the Playboy Mansion to see if you can answer Adam Corolla’s ridiculous question on the radio tomorrow morning, so you can win the whole 10 smackers and a trip inside Hugh Hefner’s secret lair? Absolutely not! You don’t even know what they do there. 'Hate to break your heart but you're not even old enough to qualify for a contest like that.”

“Who’s Hugh Feffler. Heffler. Whatever. Who is this guy. Is it his house? What DO the bunnies do at Feffler's house, mom?”

“You see, there’s a lot of wild bunnies running around there.”

“Hopping, you mean, right mom. Bunnies hop. They don’t run.”

“Thanks, smarty pants. Yeah, I suppose you could say they hop. Maybe up and down even. As I was saying, the Playboy Mansion is a great big house where bunnies live and throw parties. There's other animals too. They’re all animals there.”

“Even monkeys and lions, mom?”

“Yes, even monkeys and lions.” You’d have to live under a rock to not know that old Heff collects wild animals and keeps a few on the posh premises.

“So how do we get invited to one of Feffler’s animal parties, mom? Are they having a real Halloween party with costumes and spooky stuff and everything?”

“I already tried to get into the Playboy Mansion … a long time ago. They wouldn’t let me in. It’s a long story, honey. Why am I even telling you this?”

“Oooh … tell me, mommy. Tell me.”

“Heck NO!”

“Why not?!”

“Because it’s as inappropriate for young ears like yours as waking up to the Adam Corolla show every day on your way to kindergarten, that’s why! Now don’t ask me to tell you anything else about the Playboy Mansion. And from now on I’m taking you to kindergarten.”

Stupid me … Getting my panties all in a bunch and letting my son see me steam over his unexpected Playboy Mansion interrogation. It won’t be long before his smart ass finds out it’s home to practically every American man’s dream, even paradise.

“Aw, mom. Not my special dad time. You can’t take that away.” (.. and I didn't. I was talking through my ... because I was pissed. Of course my husband will still take him to school ... right after I rip his car speakers out ...)

Just then my middle child, 3-year-old Moody Cheeks McGee, chimes in from his backseat booster chair with his own burning preschool Playboy Mansion question. … and all along I thought he wasn’t listening.

“Mama, do ‘dees bunnies at da’ Big Boy Man-shun … do ‘dees bunnies bite?”

“Yeah, honey. Sometimes the bunnies bite, just like any other wild, untamed animal from time to time.” (You bet I’d bite a pillow too if I had to give it up to old toupee-lidded Heff every night in front of all his other paid-off-with-Porsches harem honeys.)


What I didn’t tell The Maestro of Mouth, my curious 5-year-old kindergartner son, is that I did in fact make a personal pit stop at old Heff’s palatial pad about ten years back, when I first arrived still practically a tourist in California from New Hampshire. My husband and I had just wrapped up the obligatory Star Maps tour of Beverly Hills. What celebrity home tour would be complete without the big Playboy Mansion finish at 10236 Charing Cross Road, right?

Once we reached the top of the long, thickly wooded driveway, I bounded out of my husband’s old beater Jeep, the one he painstakingly rebuilt in order to party all the way across the country a year before I made the trek to the Golden State, and self-assuredly approached a speaker that was apparently built to look like a rock. I’m not sure if it’s still there behind the security gate. Let me know if you happen by there. Maybe my memory is going and it wasn't a rock at all. I just know I remember speaking into a rock. Don't ask what I drank that day.

What would a green 21-year-old girl, then a size 4 and in decent shape, purl sultrily into Hugh Hefner’s security rock? “Hey, I’ll show you my boobs if you let me in?” I said, barley placing my fingertips on the bottom hem of my T-shirt. I never would've done it. Serious.

“Fat chance!” Heff’s mystery rock snapped at me.

Right. I’m chopped liver now. I was chopped liver then. I’m okay with that. I can live with my aesthetic mediocrity. I’m cool. Sort of.

Fat chance is right. Fat chance my 5-year-old son’s going to win an exclusive bunny-led insider tour of the Playboy Mansion! And fat chance my husband will ever stop listening to Adam Corolla’s completely child-inappropriate filth on the way to kindergarten either. (Hey, I’d probably listen to him too if my kids WEREN’T buckled in behind me.)

Did I ever tell you about the time my son asked me who Tom Leykis is? I'm not quite ready to tell him about that bloated Flash Friday-ing, misogynist a-hole! One R-rated radio show at a time, please.

By the way, I thought I’d slyly coerce my husband into finally quitting his Adam Corolla on the way to school habit by falsely telling him our son got in trouble for talking about the Playboy Mansion in class. Bad idea.

All it took for him to dig up the truth was heading straight to the source, his main man in the morning, our five-year-old son who aspires to be the next guest at the Playboy Mansion.